


I Always Hoped That I Could Save You

by zeitgeist77



Category: Terminator (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Basically, Dani likes Grace, F/F, Feelings Realization, Heavy Angst, How Do I Tag, They face death, do they win, idk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23211166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeist77/pseuds/zeitgeist77
Summary: As the end is in sight, Commander Dani must choose whether to send Grace into the past or continue fighting for the future.
Relationships: Grace Harper & Dani Ramos
Kudos: 14





	I Always Hoped That I Could Save You

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy, I really miss them :( also college  
> Pls enjoy this HEAP of angst that has a lot of self-projection
> 
> Also, I figured out the paragraphs call that growth babbbiiieee

“Commander,” she heard. She knew the voice, but she was far away from the room they were in. Everyone was looking at her to make a decision, they always were, but now more than ever. They’d found the final plant, the last significant power plant where they were building the machines. All of the Terminators, all of the Rev 9’s, their information came from this factory. “They started building the Time Displacement Device.” one of her right hands said. He looked sternly at her and waited patiently with unease at what her orders might be. Though she felt all of her senses fire off at his words, she kept a cool face. She sat and thought for just a moment, but there was too much to consider for an allowance of one moment. 

“General Haines, how many soldiers do we have?” she asked. 

“Including the Aides, almost one hundred,” He answered. 

“How much ammo is left?”

“Enough to take ten down,” he said. He didn’t mean Rev 9’s. There were some other machines, smaller and less tactical. Terminators and Rev 9’s took more than ammo, power cores like Grace’s or nuclear energy was required. 

She listened as he spoke, trying to make a decision that wouldn’t come to her. Not that she didn’t know what the answer was, just that she really needed time to make peace with what was going to happen. She had hoped that this moment would never come, that they could win without sending Grace back, but the odds looked slim and there wasn’t much she could do but lead them into something that looked like victory. “I’m going to go over our options and we’ll reconvene at seven. Go eat, go see your families, I’ll see you back here at seven.” 

As everyone left, they all went through the door single file with hunched shoulders. They’d been going nonstop for nearly two weeks. Their compound had been invaded, so they had to run out and go to the one on the outskirts of town to their secondary base. It wasn’t able to handle the number of people it was currently holding, but it would have to for another week at least. On top of everyone sleeping on mattress pads on the ground (if even that) and eating half of the portions they were used to, they had been fighting back relentlessly and taking bigger risks as the end came into sight. They’d blown up the building with the supercomputer, now they needed to destroy the Time Displacement Device to make sure they couldn’t travel backward. Grace moved from behind Dani to sit adjacent to her at the table. 

“Did you get a scan of the building?” Dani asked Grace. Though her head was bowed, she knew Grace was looking at her and waiting for orders or to talk. 

“Yes,” Grace said. She stood up and walked to the computer, projecting the video and some images of the building that she had taken when they found the factory. Dani looked up at it, trying to memorize every frame that she saw. “The building is brick, but all of the doors are metal. There are three entrances at ground level, all of them are open up like garages. They’re guarded, but not heavily. The main entrance is at the front, that’s where most of them leave. The two side doors facing west are where they haul in scrap metal and whatever else they’re looking for. Those are not guarded, but they are frequented. The building is three stories high, and on top, there is one last door. It isn’t guarded, there’s no way up there.” she stopped to pause the video and ran her finger along the side of the wall. “But, there are windows along the wall which creates ledges that almost look like ladder rungs. I can scale the wall, but no one else can go that way with me.” 

Dani was listening, she really was, but she wasn’t thinking about the fight anymore. If they finished the time machine, and if the Rev-9 went through, Grace would have to follow. That’s the thought that occupied her mind the most. Was it time for Grace to save the Dani that had come to exist or the one that existed twenty years ago? Which one would have to watch Grace die this time? 

When Grace had augmented herself, she’d felt the same feeling then that she did now. Dani almost died, she had been impaled when the Rev-9 stabbed her. It had gone in her chest and broken her ribs, but Grace had pulled her out and saved her life. She was asleep for eight days when she finally woke up and saw Grace asleep in the chair next to her bed. The clock on the wall said 02:47, so it was really early in the morning. The bedside lamp illuminated the room enough for Dani to see the lines on Grace’s body. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t speak, but she felt a poison rising in her throat so she screamed. It woke up Grace and a nurse rushed in to give her more morphine. The pain wasn’t the problem, it was the anger that the pattern was coming back into succession. She had tried to stop the machines, she’d failed. She’d kept Grace safe to make sure she could live through this. Seeing the scars reminded her of the destiny she couldn’t control. She felt the same scream bubbling in her throat and threatening to fall out. 

“How long do you think it would take them to finish the device?” she asked. Grace was taken off guard, but she answered as if she wasn’t. 

“Two days at most.” 

“How many of them are in the factory?” 

“One Rev, and twenty defense bots.”

“And the odds that we’ll win?” Dani looked at Grace with a downturned smile that switched between a grimace and despair. Grace looked at her shoes first, then made eye contact again. She wanted to lie, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to get away with it. 

“13%,” she said. 

“We’ll get you to the device. Jump in,” she said with no hesitation.

Grace went stiff. Dani had never told Grace about what happened twenty years prior. It was the secret she’d kept best. Sara died early on in the rise of the machines. She was only human, but she held the same mantra ‘you are my mission’ like she was augmented. She blew up a warehouse with her inside, killing two Revs in one go. Now Dani was facing the world that Grace had when she was sent to Dani. 

‘Do I have to lose you? Is it my turn now?’ she thought as she looked at Grace. Then, ‘Why did it have to be you?’ but she knew the reason. There had been more augmented soldiers, two test runs before Grace. They’d both failed. Grace was the only one who would fight death for Dani and win. Dani told Grace before that she shouldn’t do it. ‘They need to perfect it and it’s not gonna be on you’ she’d sneered then at the idea.

“I guess I should be doing my goodbyes then,” she said. She sat next to Dani and they both looked at the table blankly. “Dani I-” she said.

“I know,” Dani said plainly. But, her heart betrayed itself and tears had begun to sneak out of the corners of her eyes. She wiped at them harshly, nearly threatening any others that may escape her. “Don’t say it; it’ll make this harder.” as she spoke, a whimper erupted from her throat. She felt the urge to scream, but she had to stop herself. Let it diffuse, she told herself. 

“If I don’t say it now, I won’t get the chance ever again. You know that.” Grace said which made Dani turn her head. “ You talk when you’re drunk, Dani. You tell me everything. I need to say it now or-”

“I love you too,” Dani said it so gravely that Grace felt that she had already died. In a way, she had. “When you meet me in the past, tell her that she needs to embrace what she has. She’ll lose it either way, but she deserves to enjoy it while she can.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” 

“I always hoped that I could save you,” Once she said that they sat next to each other for a minute in defeated silence. Occasionally, they would glance in the other’s direction, but they remained mute. Grace felt sick. She could only think about how furious she was that this was how it ended. She would rather have Dani hate her than want her back, somehow it would’ve been easier to be rejected than be doomed to love at separate times.

At seven on the dot, everyone was back in their respective seats. The mission was simple: get Grace to the Time Displacement Device and get her through. Everyone went back to their quarters, wherever that may be and whatever bed they had acquired for the night and slept. It was a restless sleep, every couple of hours they would wake up with nightmares about what tomorrow might bring. Grim faces and silent goodnights were made as they fell asleep for what felt like the last time next to whoever it was they were leaving behind. Grace and Dani laid in a bed together, fighting the sleep that would lull them away from one another. Neither wanted to say goodnight, but they knew they needed rest. They were just too stubborn to let their heavy eyelids win. 

As the sun rose, the squadron was moving. They took covered buses and piled in close to one another. Everyone was hunched over or on their knees praying. Their commander hadn’t said anything, no good words of encouragement or a hint of light at the end of the tunnel. They hadn’t directly been told that this was a suicide mission, but they had started to feel like it was. 

It took nearly all day to reach the Compound. The layout was exactly as Grace had shown them, not a lot of doors or hiding places. The brick was decaying, but the metal doors and the smooth stone ground looked brand new. Dani sent the rest of them to separate positions, spread them far and wide and told them to hide in the houses and offices that surrounded the plant. She waited to hear over their walkies that they were all in position. She looked at those who were fighting on the ground and held up a hand to make sure they stayed put. Grace led the way to the windows that formed a ladder. They stood five hundred feet away from the windows, Grace taking in their surroundings and then giving Dani the ‘all clear’ she needed. 

“I’m going with you,” Dani said. Grace looked at her, exasperated. But, Dani gave her the look: the wide-eyed furious look that meant that Dani was the leader and her rules were law now. It was never a threat, just a silent warning that would appear on things like a hairdryer label. Caution: if you misuse this it will hurt you and you will wish you were dead. Grace sucked in a breath, biting her lip as to not commit irreverence. She then knelt so that Dani could climb on her back. They took a moment to watch the sunset, seeing the pink and blue hues violently ripping into one another. Since the humans had all gone, oddly, the sky had become more saturated. Even the rain clouds held hints of green after ten years of the atmosphere rebuilding itself post-catastrophe. They basked in their final sunset and felt the warmth of the sun leave their rosy cheeks. “Move,” Dani said into the walkie. From a distance, they could hear machine guns firing and hitting metal. The ricochet resounded, bursting through the air and signaling the beginning of a long night. 

Just moments after the first gunshot, Grace began to climb the wall and did so with haste. Dani felt her muscle systems getting warm and growing tense with every movement she made. It didn’t take a lot to get to the roof or to break open the door at the top of the staircase. Dani administered Grace a concoction of glucagon and Lexiscan and felt Grace’s skin go cold again. They didn’t look at one another before they went in, the matter was time-sensitive. Inside was hot, even the walls seemed to sweat at the heat that radiated upwards. They walked down the stairs quietly, letting Grace look at their surroundings before moving onwards. The first machine was a defense bot, the accepted term among the group was Dummiebot. The problem was that it wasn’t meant to fight, just alarm. They weren’t like any other machine, they were quite dumb. Their whole existence was connected to the pack on the back. Without the communication pack, they had no way of receiving orders. They didn’t remember their orders when the pack was gone. Grace tiptoed behind it and ripped the pack off, then threw it over the rail and into the pool of molten rock below. She looked around for more, there was one across the rail not looking in her direction. She jumped up into the rafters where pipes and vents intermingled. She crawled over, her hands feeling warm from the hot pipes but not burning. She did the same with the second Dummiebot and kept looking around to make sure the topmost rail was clear. Fortunately, it was. Below, the machines were running out to fight the bullets being blown at them. The Rev-9 was at the floor, wiring up the final bits of the Time Displacement Device. Dani had come down the stairs and was watching the Rev-9 as it worked diligently. 

Then, it looked up. It looked directly at Dani without having to look around. Grace lept from the railing onto him and wrestled as he tried to force a spiked arm into her stomach. Dani ran down the rest of the stairs to get to the bottom, stopping every so often to take out a Dummibot since they were already activated and on the move to kill. By the time she made it to the floor, Grace was looking worse for wear, but she had an advantage on the Rev. She’d forced him into the side of the molten rock’s bowl. His back slowly melted, but he wasn’t fazed for long. He flung Grace away and quickly got back to the Time Displacement Device. Dani ran to her from behind all the equipment in the room and knelt beside her. 

“Just wait for him to get through, then you’ll follow,” Dani said, eyeing the Rev’s movements to make sure he was occupied. Just then, his metal skeleton formed outside of his human camouflage and it started to look for them. “Fuck, we need to move.”

They crawled under the nearby shelves and hid behind a stilled reactor. “I need the shot,” Grace said, reaching for the syringe in Dani’s jacket. She administered it to herself and felt the jolt of energy shoot through her veins like epinephrine. She reached behind her and ripped a steel rod off of the shelf behind her. She passed it to Dani who held onto it tightly. As she handed it off, Grace looked at the device and saw the box that he was working on. She saw a strange light bursting out of the box that reminded her of the light from the power source in her chest. She smiled, unable to hide the thrill from the thought she was having. She looked at Dani, then said, “I can beat it.”

“Stick to the plan,” Dani ordered. Her face did the thing again, almost making Grace listen. 

“I can do it!” she pleaded. 

“Percent. Right now.” Dani demanded. Grace looked at the Rev and the skeleton that was coming towards them. She felt a pit form in her stomach as she waited for the probability to become clear. But, there wasn’t time. She looked at Dani and thought about her options: stay here and kill everyone off or go the safe route and follow the Rev. Then she thought, which is the one I want? She couldn’t stop herself. She wanted to write a letter of apologies and tell Dani everything that had run through her head in less than four seconds, but she didn’t have the time. She grabbed Dani’s face and kissed her quickly, but with as much love as she could manage.

Watching Grace leave, Dani felt the scream burst out of her. It felt like she was throwing up all of the radiation that she’d been exposed to. It felt like expelling the chemo out of her mother’s cancer-ridden body. It was the scream that had stayed inside her body whenever she was young and working at the factory, counting the pennies that might get her and her family through. Years of misery and trauma crawled up out of her stomach and poured into the factory turning the heat up so much everything felt like it was on fire. 

The skeleton was on her, grabbing her and pushing her to the ground. She kicked its legs and forced it away. They both stood on their feet, it moving steadily towards her and she swung the rod as if it was a bat. With all of the rage that forty years had accumulated, she beat the shit out of the skeleton and felt her hands blister from the ribbed steel. It put its arms up and defended itself against the rod, knocking her back a foot and forming blades with its arms. Just as it was about to slice into Dani, it turned and walked towards the man, reforming with him as the device began to power on. Dani watched as he began to dissolve in time. But, she wasn’t in shock for long. Grace was at the box, breaking the door open and messing with whatever was inside. As she did, the veins in her arms leading to her heart began to light up with it. As she worked the wires, the Rev was struck with what looked like lightning. Dani scooted herself back from the device as quickly as she could but kept her eyes glued to the scene. It made no noise as it burned. It was stuck in its demise, burning and melting into the floor. Grace let out a pained cry and moved her hands out of the box, then ran towards Dani. She pulled Dani up as quickly as she could, pushing Dani towards the empty reactor and behind it as she watched the Rev burn up in the Device. Dani watched too, kneeling below Grace and seeing the machine turn into ash. Grace pulled her away from the edge of the reactor, gripping her tight as an explosion sounded off from that direction. 

They ran outside to see the last of the defense bots fighting against what looked like a handful of humans. They helped, slowly fighting off what was left and then collapsing on the ground when it was done. 

When they woke up, they woke up to the sun rising. They were surrounded by humans, bleeding and broken, but humans. Dani looked at Grace who was wrapping up her burnt hands. They leaned against the wall of the building opposite the factory, everyone looking at Grace with an odd stare, confused as to why she was still in their time. “You disobeyed direct orders,” Dani said. Grace chuckled and finished the wraps around her fingers. 

“Seventy-three point six eight nine,” she said. She looked at Dani to see if she understood. “I left to find a good view of the box and when I did, that was the final probability of success. She smiled at her hands, proud that they had held up against the energy. 

“Will they heal?” Dani asked, not even hinting at saying anything else. 

“Not this time,” Grace answered. She didn’t seem upset about that fact. Instead, she was fond of the memory. She smiled at Dani, unable to contain her pride in their work. “What’s next?” She asked, ready for an order. 

Dani looked at her militia, tired and hungry. Tired and free. They were basking in the sunlight, splitting whatever food they’d managed to smuggle on their trip here. One of the guys was smiling, his bloody teeth glistening in the light of day. She looked in the other direction at a woman writing something in a notepad she’d seen hundreds of times but never had the privilege of reading. Finally, she looked at Grace and saw the hope of what could be millions of people burning so bright it felt like looking at heaven. Serenity washed over her for the first time in years, so Dani let her permanent frown raise into a proud smile just like Grace’s. “I guess it’s time to embrace.”


End file.
